Bn PROJECTS - Maison GREGOIRE

On a bien accroché

with Marc Buchy & Shuzo Azuchi Gulliver

Bn PROJECTS & Maison Grégoire are very pleased to invite you to
On a bien accroché, an exhibition specially conceived for the space of Maison Grégoire and revolving around the confrontation of the works of Marc Buchy and Shuzo Azuchi Gulliver.

The title of the project plays in French with the ambiguity with the expression : In an antinomic fashion to begin with, for accrocher means in French to hang (a picture) and there will hardly be anything hung on the walls for this project, which will mostly present immaterial protocol-based body of work.
But the expression also means in French on a metaphoric level, « we got along well », thus implying the idea of potential and spontaneous affinities existing between these two artists, at first sight very different.
One of the stakes of the project was indeed to confront these two artists from two different generations and continents, but whose bodies of work articulate around conceptual and often immaterial protocols, incarnated./activated in their respective bodies and minds.

The work of Shuzo Azuchi a.k.a. Gulliver, one of the major exponents of Japanese Fluxus, is mainly articulated around a mediated strategy of expansion and spreading of his vital energy, DNA and body material in the space he shares with the beholder.
Specifically and radically « generous », but also situating itself between semi-liturgical rites of transmission, an attitude of creative hubris, or an attempt at infiltrating or conquering spaces of mediated immortality, the physical and mental beings of Gulliver often stand in the limelight of his installations, performances, drawings, and form literally the first material - analyzed, translated, or even dismembered - of his body of work.

For this project, we will activate, in a specific and performative way, one of the most emblematic and seminal works in his production, the Body Project, a protocol whereby Gulliver organizes in a carefully-planned contractual fashion the gift and transmission of his body, dismembered into 80 parts.
Besides recent works specially created for the show, we will also activate in a novel way, his Weight project (consisting of the installation of a sculptural element of a weight corresponding to that of the artist), just as we will try and spread the transcription of his DNA in an integrated way throughout the domestic space of Maison Grégoire.

On his side, the work of the Brussels-based young French artist Marc Buchy, which often operates in stealth-like mode, acts as a sort of spanner in the works, disrupting the perfectly oiled mechanics of the contexts where he intervenes.
Discrete, infra-visible and anti-spectacular, his works may at first sight seem far from those of Shuzo Azuchi.
Nevertheless, on closer inspection, there are several points of convergence between the two : Questioning the very concepts of transmission and circulation (whether it be of knowledge, values, or of what specifically makes an artwork), their effectiveness and relevancy or, a contrario, their uselessness, Buchy’s works only find their implementation in relation with the body or the mind which imagined them, that is Marc’s.

A work such as Naevius, whereby Marc Buchy had a very naturalistic naevius tattooed on his back, which he offers for sale, thus making its potential buyer the owner of a drawn part of his body, offers a good significant counterpoint to to Azuchi’s Body project. In this case though, the collector will only be able to contemplate and or exhibit his artwork by inviting Marc Buchy, and as long as the artist is alive of course.
To illustrate a similar counterpoint, we could compare Shuzo Azuchi’s Gift projects whereby he commits himself - as he will do for On a bien accroché - , to gift to the willing visitors a given Japanese phoneme (in the present case, yo), whenever he will pronounce it from now on, with Buchy’s Instructions protocol.
In this project, Buchy sells to a collector the promise never to take astronomy courses or dance lessons for the rest of his life.
The question of the acquisition or, conversely, of the hindrance of knowledge, that of the relevancy or utility of cognitive commitments, are central in Buchy’s practice : Over the past years he has been pursuing an attempt at drawing freehand or, rather, in a free-arm fashion, a perfect circle.
For On a bien accroché, he is initiating a protocol where he will invite the curator of the show, or even the visitors, to try and use their wrong hand for different compositional or writing exercises.
A performance that will not be announced and will probably remain unnoticed during the opening will be further activated in stealth mode by two young artists who have spent a significant amount of time during the preparation of the show with Buchy : the idea was to invite them to observe him, so as to reproduce, in an integrated way, his body language and expressions.

Besides these individual projects, which operate towards each other as echoes in affinity or dissonance, On a bien accroché will also promote and activate a strategy of interpenetration and cross-pollination of Shuzo Azuchi’s and Marc Buchy’s respective practices and singular projects, whether it be in the physical space or the communication of the exhibition.

Emmanuel Lambion

Special Previews on Sat. 21/4 and Sun 22/4/2018, on the occasion of Art Brussels
Vernissage on Sat. 28 April 2018, 3-7 p.m.

Exhibition open on Saturdays, 2-6 p.m. and by appointment
From 21 April until 16 June 2018

With the support of
ArtBrussels, Brussels
Tatjana Pieters, Gent
SAGYO, Tokyo
Maria Rosa Pividori Milano

Maison Grégoire
292 Dieweg
B 1180 Bruxelles
www.bnprojects.be